Thanks for finding another great article on this issue and posting it.
Phil,remember my question to you yesterday, where I wondered if Soddomite or his close thugs could have been responsible for the looting of this museum. Well guess what this article has noted:
"But "I would personally suggest it was done by Saddam's circle, and my prime suspect would by Uday," says Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," in an interview. "Saddam and his family are basically cultural vandals. When he left Kuwait he trashed the place. So it makes sense that when he leaves Iraq he took the most valuable items." Saddam's family is essentially "a Mafia family, and Barzan [Saddam's half-brother], the guy arrested Thursday, was basically the bagman."
Saddam had been busy looting the museum long before the war began. A decade ago, Iraq Opposition Radio alleged that "several antiquity collections have found their way outside Iraq and been sold for the benefit of Saddam's family and his cronies." And in October the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that Saddam had started moving -- to a remote town in northwestern Iraq -- several truckloads of "gold bars and artworks from museums in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul."
But clearly he hadn't moved it all, and at least some of the looting, to judge by press accounts, was done by ordinary Iraqis on a spree. Again: Why? It's not as if there is an easy resale market in such things.
The truth is finally coming out, but a lot of the media still refuses to report it.
Many of us were saying this before, that if there was looting, it was done by Saddam's henchmen. This article also mentions that Saddam had been plundering the Iraqi treasures and keeping them for themselves and selling them, themselves.
BTW, there is a link from the article to another article in the WSJ, which doesn't work, here is the link & copy of the earlier WSJ article. Note that there are rumors spread in Baghdad, that the Americans did the looting. Just remember, there are still a lot of fedayeen around and that they are continuing their guerilla/terrorist warfare, which includes sabotage, vandalism, to try to foster anti-AMerican sentiments.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105053292455773900,00.html?mod=article-outset-box Iraqis Say Museum Looting
Wasn't as Bad as Feared
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Last week's looting of the Iraq National Museum, which saw numerous items disappear from a vast collection spanning eight millennia of Mesopotamian history, has provoked world-wide outcry -- and criticism of the U.S. military for its failure to protect Iraq's priceless cultural heritage.
But, thanks to Iraqi preparations before the war, it seems the worst has been avoided. Donny George, the director-general of restoration at the Iraqi Antiquities Department, Wednesday said his staff had preserved the museum's most important treasures, including the kings' graves of Ur and the Assyrian bulls. These objects were hidden in vaults that haven't been violated by looters.
"Most of the things were removed. We knew a war was coming, so it was our duty to protect everything," Mr. George said. "We thought there would be some sort of bombing at the museum. We never thought it could be looted."
In a city where frequent shooting occurs day and night and the telephones don't work, reliable information is often hard to obtain. Earlier this week, some museum workers reached foreign journalists to complain about an orgy of looting in the museum, saying that little of the collection remains. As secrecy long enveloped the museum -- where part of the collection had been siphoned off by Saddam Hussein's family and sold abroad -- it isn't clear whether these museum workers knew about the prewar preparations to hide the most-valuable artifacts.
A U.S. tank takes up position at the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad Wednesday, after looters last week walked off with antiquities or smashed what they couldn't steal.
Along with the destruction of ancient manuscripts at the Iraq National Library and other acts of vandalism throughout the city, the museum's looting has prompted a wave of anti-American anger. A belief often voiced in the streets of Baghdad holds that U.S. soldiers themselves stole the most-precious objects in the collection and used the looters to cover up the crime. Mr. George, standing side by side with the American commander in the area, Lt. Col. Eric Schwartz of the U.S. Army Third Infantry Division's Task Force 1-64, dispelled this view. But he said many valuable items are still missing.
Among the antiquities unaccounted for so far, Mr. George said, are the sacral vase of Warqa, from Sumerian times, and the bronze statue of Basitqi, from the Accadian civilization.
The museum compound was occupied Wednesday by a company-size tank unit, and a notice by the gate says the site is protected by the U.S. military. The museum floor is littered with debris, and access inside is forbidden because Iraqi specialists are working to catalogue what remains and to try to restore some of the items, Lt. Col. Schwartz said.
"There was a tremendous amount of looting just for destruction purposes -- and there were artifacts that were not destroyed at all," he said. "It was not as bad as I thought it would be."
Lt. Col. Schwartz, whose functions also include feeding the lions in the abandoned Baghdad Zoo next door, said he couldn't move into the museum compound and protect it from looters last week because his soldiers were taking fire from the building -- and were determined not to respond. There is an Iraqi army trench in the museum's front lawn, and Lt. Col. Schwartz said his troops found many Iraqi army uniforms inside. "If there is any dirty trick in the book," he said, "they sure used it."
I thought that you might be interested in the latest on the so called looting. What if the looting was coordinated by Soddomite and his inner circle?
"But "I would personally suggest it was done by Saddam's circle, and my prime suspect would by Uday," says Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," in an interview. "Saddam and his family are basically cultural vandals. When he left Kuwait he trashed the place. So it makes sense that when he leaves Iraq he took the most valuable items." Saddam's family is essentially "a Mafia family, and Barzan [Saddam's half-brother], the guy arrested Thursday, was basically the bagman."
Saddam had been busy looting the museum long before the war began. A decade ago, Iraq Opposition Radio alleged that "several antiquity collections have found their way outside Iraq and been sold for the benefit of Saddam's family and his cronies." And in October the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that Saddam had started moving -- to a remote town in northwestern Iraq -- several truckloads of "gold bars and artworks from museums in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul."
But clearly he hadn't moved it all, and at least some of the looting, to judge by press accounts, was done by ordinary Iraqis on a spree. Again: Why? It's not as if there is an easy resale market in such things.
I thought that you might like to have this to use as a MOAB the next time some phoney conservative on Free Republic tries to blame our troops, Rummy and GW for the looting of the Museum.
Good find. FR is full of arm-chair generals who have been ripping the US a new one over our alleged failure to stop the looting.
Nightline last night was an abysmal hit piece on the Marines " failure " to protect the museum. They even edited Rumsfeld's light hearted comments to the press, last week about seeing the same video of one guy taking a vase and being shown over and over- to make it seem as if Rumsfeld was laughing about historic vases being taken. The vase that Rumsfeld was talking about was filled with plastic flowers and was being carted out of a palace. CBS news on the radio said it may not have been " the laxity of the Marines ", which caused the looting.
NO MARINE BLOOD FOR POTTERY !!!